Gemma Gracewood
Gemma Gracewood (Pākehā, she/her) is the editor in chief of Letterboxd, the global social network for film lovers based in Tāmaki Makaurau.
A producer, writer and director with a strong background in publicity and audience strategy, Gemma’s production credits encompass film, television, radio and online series, with a bent towards arts, music and comedy. Her professional background includes a term as media and arts advisor with the Fourth Labour Government, producer and correspondent for RNZ, freelance production in New York, and three decades as a long-form writer of magazine and online feature stories. She is a board member of the NZ Comedy Trust and founding komiti member of the Aotearoa Screen Publicists Collective. Gemma has also toured Aotearoa and beyond as a member and manager of the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra (including Melbourne International Comedy Festival and Edinburgh Fringe). Obviously, she is a Gemini.
What does leadership look like to you?
Gemma: Creative midwifery: creating the conditions for team members to thrive, recognising and encouraging their strengths, enabling and elevating them, knowing I don’t have all the answers. Big fan of spotting good ideas and getting them underway; elevating team members into roles and responsibilities they didn’t know they were born for. Try (and often fail) to lead by example when interrogating the boundaries between work and other parts of life because, in the arts, work is also life—it gets a little blurry and burnout comes easily.
How does your community show up in your practice?
Gemma: Community is very specific to my work at Letterboxd since our whole kaupapa is millions of individuals connected by a shared interest. It’s all about serving this community’s passion, while ensuring their safety, while harnessing their passion for the greater good of the film industry. One of my superpowers is making connections between people for no return other than the satisfaction of creative momentum; another is sharing contacts and best practice from overseas in the NZ context, while bringing a NZ mindset to our international work. Nothing we do is in isolation; there are intersections and connections between all things.
